Tuesday, July 31, 2012

“The Portuguese never
put anything behind them except a chair to eat lunch.”
― Robert Wilson, A Small Death in
Lisbon

Illustration: A Portuguese side chair with embossed leather
seat, Third quarter of the 18th century. The scene embossed on the seat
is composed of a border of diaperwork and floral decoration surrounding an
elaborate rocaille motif. Within the design a
blindfolded cupid points his arrow at a winged and flaming heart with an eye at
its center, possibly representing theEye of Providence.The flaming heart signifies extreme ardour or religious
fervor, and is an attribute of St. Anthony of Padua (also known as Anthony of
Lisbon).

Monday, July 30, 2012

Symbols
are containers of the various levels of knowledge. They represent
metaphysical insight into the organizing principle of life itself.

At
their most condensed and when logically understood for what they are, symbols
possess enormous power as sources of psychic energy. They recapitulate
the ontology of natural growth, and more specifically, the evolution of the
human race and the intellectual and emotional development of every child.
In effect, the code of human universals resides in two contrasting forms:
the first is in each human brain, the second is in all artifacts comprising the
man-made world.

In
terms of practical function and iconicity, every manufactured object and
spatial enclosure represents a deductible imprint of specific universals.
Consequently, this code is carried from generation to generation by two
separate means: organically through
the brain of every living individual and inorganically
through the trans-lingual relationships embodied in every artifact,
writing, or spatial relationship.

This
invites a great paradox.

All
profound art and writing lies in conflict between being as the essence of spiritual revelation and the illusional
permanence of the written word, the icon or the sacred space.

Jack
Burnham, “Objects and Ritual: Toward a Working Ontology of Art”, in Great
Western Salt Works, Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art, New York,
George Braziller, 1974.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

"Madame Tussaud’s is
a museum of famous people, or rather of their wax-effigies. The Royal
Family is there (also King Alphonso, somewhat moth-eaten). Mr.
MacDonald’s Ministry, French Presidents, Dickens and Kipling, marshals, Mademoiselle Lenglen, famous murderers of the last century and
the souvenirs of Napoleon, such as his socks, belt and hat ; then in a place of dishonor
Kaiser Wilhelm and Franz Josef, still looking spruce for his age.

Before one
particularly effective effigy of a gentlemen in a top-hat I stopped and looked
into the catalogue to see who it was ; suddenly the
gentlemen with the top-hat moved and walked away ; it was
awful.

After a while two young
ladies looked into the catalogue to see whom I represented.

At Madame Tussaud’s
I made a somewhat unpleasant discovery
;
either I am quite incapable of reading human faces, or else physiognomies are
deceptive. So for example I was at first
sight attracted by a seated gentleman with a goatee beard, No. 12. In the catalogue
I found : “12. Thomas Nell Cream,
hanged in 1892. Poisoned Matilda Glover with strychnine. He was
also found guilty of murdering three other women.” Really, his
face is very suspicious. No. 13, Franz Müller, murdered Mr. Briggs in the
train. H’m. No. 20, a
clean-shaven gentlemen, of almost worthy appearance : Arthur Devereux,
hanged 1905, known as the “trunk
murderer,”
because he hid the corpses of his victims in trunks. Horrid. No. 21
– no, this worthy priest cannot be “Mrs. Dyer, the Reading baby murderess.”

I now perceive that I have confused the pages of the catalogue, and
I am compelled to correct my impressions : the seated gentleman, No. 12, is merely Bernard Shaw ; No. 13 is Louis Blériot, and No. 20 is
simply Gugliemo Marconi.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Vargueño: Spanish, XVIth century Museum of the Hispanic
Society, New York

Trolling
for good news from anywhere (it isn’t easy to find these days), I uncovered this description of the marvelous Spanish
sixteenth century inlaid cabinet shown above:

“VARGUEÑO cabinets exemplified the highest attainments of the
Spanish cabinet makers. In skilful
construction and in mastery of the art of decoration, they are distinctly
characteristic of Spanish furniture, which, in this art, reached the highest
point of excellence.

These
pieces were habitually made of walnut, a wood which lent itself to ornate
turning and carving. At times, inlay, as
well as color, was added to heighten the effect.

The vargueño consists of a chest, which rests upon a stand made
expressly made for this cabinet, but which was treated in a decorative manner
quite different from the cabinet it supported.

In this
special example, the stand is made up of three legs at each end, which rise
from a runner foot and support above a heavy cross rail upon which the cabinet
rests. From these block rail braces, two
massive supports pull out to hold the drop front when the latter is
lowered. These sides are ornamented on
their exposed ends with the cockle shell motif, carved in high relief. An arcaded stretcher, richly turned, connects
the center leg supports.

A different Vargueño, also Spanish XVIth century

The
exterior of the chest itself is of the simplest nature, depending for
decorative effect upon the handsome and intricate designs of the applied
ironwork. In Spain metal trimmings were
developed to an extraordinary degree and far excelled this craft in other parts
of Europe.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The style of the Rajput
paintings is an archaic,
unsophisticated style. The figures mostly appear according to the
principle of “perfect
visibility,” which is contrary
to any attempt at giving the illusion of a third
dimension: the heads
are shown in profile, but
with the visible eye in full length, the chest
is displayed in
full expanse and the gestures are confined to the front plane.
The background is, comparatively, simple;
buildings as well as landscape settings have often to serve a linear system of surface
organization reminiscent, in a fashion, of the compartmental sectioning of
the Gujurati miniatures.
But the figures with
their striking gestures and expressive attitude
convey a feeling of tremendous
energy and the background is penetrated by their own emotional atmosphere.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

We
were both attending a
“CEO Summit” at the Sundance Resort in Utah, an event
hosted by the venture
capital firm that backed the businesses each of us worked
for at the time. Sally
was the president of a new, pretty cool company called Space.com. Unlike me,who figured simply as a “gray-hair”/authority/stable management totem
at my firm, Sally was a legitimate
superstar/trophy/marquee figurefor
hers, attracting positive press notices and additional investment, both of
course quintessential aspects of dot.com life.

Our
v.c. backers asked Sally to be the
featured attraction at one of the conference’s lavish evening events. (The
other celebrity on display there was Gen. Colin Powell. As big a phony
as he usually seems when appearing on television, in person he really was
a riveting
public speaker.)

Sally’s
presentation consisted of a
fascinating guided tour through her outer space photograph collectionand she was
charming, funny and modest describing how putting on slide shows like this one
was an easy, automatic way
to garner positive attention and rapt audience interest.

I
wouldn’t have accosted her, but we happened to be thrown together during a couple of cocktail hours and,
never having met an astronaut,I
wasn’t going to shy away from the opportunity to speak to her. One thing
I knew, apart from the things
every American had learned about her, was that she had
originally attended Swarthmore College, where I also studied as an
undergraduate, so I used this as my “ice-breaker.”

Sally
flashed warmly on
the memory, sayingthat she loved Swarthmore, but that she had fooled herself into
thinking that she might be able to live comfortably far away from the California sunshine
of home. One cold, wet
Pennsylvania winter followedby
a disappointing spring and the promise of another gloomy January prompted
her mid-sophomore year
departure for Stanford.

We discussed how we both felt like fish out of water at our respective
companies (and frankly at the conference) and how basically foreign the all the hyper-drive
commercial activities on amped-up
display there felt to her. She said (ever modestly) that she was a scientistand she felt most comfortable being involved in research
and teaching, although she said she also loved working at NASA
and her time in the astronaut program.

So
I wasn’t surprised when I learned a few months later that she had left Space.com
and all the pressures,
depredations, natterings, dark mutterings and sometimes
violent outbursts inherent in dot.com office life.

I
was so very sorry and sad to learn of Sally Ride’s passing on Monday, late in the afternoon of a very hot day,
sitting in a steamy house in southeastern Pennsylvania, not far from
Swarthmore, waiting for the air conditioning repairman to arrive.

Like
all astronauts, she was a huge, automatic inspiration to me,but
as the “first U.S. woman in space,” of course she held a special place in my
heart.